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‘Dragonfly’ follow-up

I read about Google’s ‘Dragonfly’ project back in September and decided to follow-up on this news story.

‘Dragonfly’ is the codename for a censored search engine produced by Google for China. It has all the ethical violations you’re wondering, which essentially means providing a tool to perpetuate dictatorial censorship in the Communist country.

The most recent news was a letter posted on a Medium account, Google Employees Against Dragonfly (interesting choice for communication), addressing Google (again) and the need to cease the project. There have been outcries from human rights organizations, government officials, Google employees, and the general public, however Google has not reported any efforts to relinquish the project. In fact, Alphabet (parent company of Google) chair John Hennessey has said that doing business in China requires compromising “core values” (cited in Salinas & D’Onfro, 2018). What’s the point of having core values then?